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A binary star or binary star system is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other.
- Binary star, Wikipedia
They end up kissing on the narrow stairs that lead up to the flat above the bookshop. It’s late. It’s quiet. And it’s dark, because the lightbulb has been broken for the past six and a half weeks and Asa hasn’t yet bothered to change it, because after all –
“It’s not like I ever go up or down here in the dark you see, I don’t really – well, it’s –” He almost drops his keys, because he’s drunk. “Oh, dear.”
“You don’t go out.”
“No. Well, yes, I do, I do have dinner, but I don’t – go out. No. I figured I’d have time until say, September. Do you –” He stops when Crowley stumbles, because he’s drunk as well. “Watch your step, dear, are you –”
“It’s fine, I’m fine. It’s a damned wonder you haven’t broken your neck yet.”
Asa reaches for him, anyway, an arm around his narrow waist, slipping underneath his jacket. He tells himself it’s to steady him, even though he’s a grown man way past telling lies to himself; he only wants to touch him. He laughs, breathless.
“I’m sorry, I know, I know. Derek always tells me – he owns the whole building, lets me live here, he’s a good one. But he always tells me –” Before the door to his flat, he drops the keys. “Oh, no.”
They both try to pick them up and only end up kicking them down the stairs in the process, if the clattering noise is any indication. Asa curses underneath his breath and what he can see of Crowley’s silhouette looks delighted, eyes bright even in the dark.
“Did you just –”
“Oh, not a word.”
“No, nope, definitely not, I want to hear that again. Your mother teach you that, too?”
He leans against him and right, Asa’s arm is still around his waist and god, he’s warm. “Shush. Help me find the keys, would you, then –”
“Oh, wait! Right. Wait.” Crowley pats down his pockets and finally finds what he’s looking for. “Here.”
Asa realizes it’s a phone when the flashlight burns itself right into his eyes.
“Shit, sorry. Sorry.”
Crowley lowers the light and looks for the keys. They did tumble a few steps down the stairs. Crowley disentangles himself to tumble right after them, the flashlight of his phone drawing strange shadows on the walls. He picks up the keys and turns around, grinning, his glasses askew.
He comes back up the stairs, dangling the keys on a finger in front of him. He offers them to Asa with a ridiculous little bow and before Asa knows what he’s doing he reaches for him again, this time grasping the lapels of his coat. He pulls him in and, yes, they end up kissing.
Crowley makes a noise low in his throat and stays where he is for a moment, standing two steps of stairs away. But then, without breaking the kiss, he hurries up to Asa’s level, hands coming to rest on Asa’s waist. They stumble, almost fall, and still keep kissing. Something clatters to the ground, the keys again, Crowley’s phone.
Asa ends up with his back against the wall, he thinks Crowley’s standing on two steps at once but it’s fine, it works just fine like this. He has one hand at the back of Crowley’s head now, thumb pushing at the spot right behind his ear, probably not helping the askew glasses situation. His other hand is on Crowley’s upper back, where he can’t feel the shoulder blade through the coat but wishes he could. Crowley tastes like good food and wine and everything else Asa likes.
Crowley’s hands slip under Asa’s jacket as they kiss, but don’t quite make it past his sweater and Asa wishes they would. He wishes, he wants, he’s not sure he’s ever –
“Bloody hell,” Crowley mutters against his mouth, pulls back, kisses him again, then back again. His mouth moves to Asa’s jaw and his hand, miraculously, to the back of Asa’s head just as it was about to hit the wall. “You’re – I’ve been – is this okay?”
Asa grabs him by his lapels again to kiss him again, and again, feels Crowley inhale sharply, shuddering. He pulls back again and this time, Asa lets him, even though he can’t make himself stop touching him. It feels rather like the world would end if he stopped touching him, but well, he has often been told that he’s too dramatic.
“Is this okay?” Crowley asks again, voice rough. He reaches up to right his glasses; the phone landed flashlight up so Asa can see a good three thirds of Crowley’s face, among that the golden flecks in his eyes. “Not too fast?”
“No,” Asa breathes out. Something in him gives and softens. He pulls Crowley’s hand away from between his own head and the wall and kisses his palm. “No. Not at all, it’s – I’m sorry, maybe I’m being terribly impudent, but it feels – just right.”
“Right,” Crowley echoes. “Right. Yes.” He takes another breath. “Yes, thank god.”
And then he’s kissing him again and it feels just right indeed.
*
They don’t wake slow in the next morning, because Crowley’s phone goes off with just about the most obnoxious music Asa has ever heard and he’d very much like to throw a brick at it.
Crowley is up before Asa can get his bearings, stumbling and cursing as he looks for his phone to turn off the alarm. Asa props himself up on his elbows and stares at this man that has somehow found his way not only into Asa’s flat, but also his bed, all within the span of a few hours on a perfectly normal Tuesday afternoon. And evening. And night.
“Sorry,” Crowley says, fumbling with his phone. He’s squinting. “It’s just, ugh. Class. I have. Class. Is it Friday?”
Asa blinks, trying to make it through the thick fog of sleep and post-wine headache. “Wednesday, I believe.”
Crowley groans and drops down on the edge of the bed. Finally, he manages to turn off the alarm. “Fucking. Wednesday class. Friday’s better. I –” He rubs his forehead and keeps squinting at the phone screen. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.”
“Oh. Of course, yes.” Asa blinks again. It’s Wednesday. He has to open the shop. He feels half dead, though, he can’t open the shop half dead. “Of course.”
“I’m sorry,” Crowley says again. “I – shit, have you seen –”
Asa already spotted Crowley’s glasses on the nightstand, right next to the book Asa is currently reading. He forces himself to move, picks up the glasses and scoots over to Crowley’s spot on the edge of the bed to hand them over.
“Thanks,” Crowley says and puts them on. They make his eyes look just the tiniest big bigger. His hair is a mess, terribly ginger, and Asa can’t help but – but touch him. Just touch him.
A hand on the side of his face. Fingertips on the patch of empty skin right above where his jaw starts, before the ear. The brown of his eyes kicks off butterflies in Asa’s stomach.
“What,” Crowley says, confused.
Asa shakes his head. He clears his throat. “You can use my bathroom. If you like. Right next door.”
Crowley nods. He stands up and gathers up his clothes. He’s still in his dress shirt from the night before, and also still wearing his underwear. Looking down at himself, Asa realizes that he is wearing his favorite pyjama. There’s the split of a second memory of Crowley laughing at the tartan pattern, laughing so hard the bed shook with it, and Asa not feeling mocked for even the shortest moment.
Crowley shuffles into the bathroom. Asa gets up. He accidentally kicks a half empty bottle of wine and sends it rolling over the floor, spilling its last contents everywhere. This is just his luck, really. Of course the one time he manages to take the most gorgeous man ever home, they’re too drunk to do anything more than kissing. Although, the kissing was quite good. His ears burn just thinking about it.
He makes tea. He’s still preparing two cups by the time Crowley comes out of the bathroom, looking ready to leave. Looking perfect, all the way down to his snakeskin shoes.
“Oh,” Asa says. “I made tea. Would you like anything else? I have toast, and –” He doesn’t know what else he has. “I’m sure I can put a little something together –”
“No, sorry, I. I have class. I really do have class, and I need to pick up my things from home and, you know how students are, they’re a nightmare, so. I need to go.”
“Oh, of course, yes, I’m sorry. Don’t let me keep you, please.”
“Yes. I mean, no, it’s fine. But.”
“Yes.”
They stare at each other for a moment, then Asa clears his throat and brings him to the door. “Well. It was lovely to – to have you here.”
“Yeah.” Crowley gives him a grin, boyish and charming, and there are the butterflies again. “Yeah, you can say that. Have a nice day, angel, eh?”
“Ah. Yes, you too, of course.”
And then he’s gone, and Asa stands in the hallway of his small flat and wonders why he feels like he forgot something. Maybe he left something behind at the pub last night. Angel. He scratches behind his ear. Still burning.
Good grief. He runs a hand over his face and turns to go to the bathroom when there is a knock at the door.
He all but tears it open and finds Crowley standing on the other side, grin still in place. He’s out of breath, like he just ran up the stairs.
“Hi. I forgot, did you still want my number?”
Asa lets out a breath he feels like he’s been holding the last fifty years.
*
“Hey. Uh. Class is over. You’re probably working, so. How about dinner? This – tonight? Or tomorrow, or whatever works for you. It’s Anthony, by the way. You know it’s me, I watched you save my number. Uh. Yeah, bye.”
*
“Hi, yeah, it’s me again. I was thinking, I could do lunch, too. Like, uh, right now. Or whenever you’re on break. If you want. I’d like – yeah. Meet in St. James?”
*
Lunch turns to a walk turns to hours talking on a bench turns to Asa forgetting about the bookshop and apologizing profusely to Derek, who just looks confused. Turns to a phone call in the evening, rambling to the occasional mh-hm and the spraying noise of the water bottle. Turns to Asa falling asleep on the sofa and waking up in the middle of the night to Crowley’s soft snoring, the call still active. Turns to dinner.
Crowley across from him, chin propped up in his hand. Watching. Eyes barely blinking behind his glasses, the dim light in the restaurant catching on the few streaks of grey in his hair.
Asa daps his mouth, self-conscious. “You’re finished?”
The corner of Crowley’s mouth tugs upward and he pushes one of the bamboo baskets closer to Asa. “Yeah, all done. Don’t let that stop you.”
Asa flushes all the way up to the tips of his ears just because he can’t stop looking at that smirk. He coughs a little, watching Crowley’s grin widen.
Turns to walking up the stairs to Asa’s apartment again, this time not stumbling. Sober – well, sober enough. Asa wishes he was drunk; at least the last time, he wasn’t nervous.
He opens the door to his flat and steps aside, holding it open for Crowley. “After you, please.”
Crowley’s head tilts to the side before he slithers in. “Well, that was more graceful than last time. Good job, us.”
“Yes, quite,” Asa says, breathless, and then somehow they are kissing again, not half as desperate as last time.
Turns to Crowley in the bedroom, stumbling on own foot as he pulls of his socks.
“Are you gonna curse again? I wanna hear.”
Asa, already naked on the bed because Crowley spent the last twenty minutes kissing and undressing him, frowns. “I don’t curse, Crowley.”
Crowley barks a laugh. “You’re such a bloody liar.”
Before Asa can argue – and he was going to argue – Crowley is in bed with him, crawling on top of him. Which means he’s back within kissing distance, so talking is secondary. It’s skin against skin, now. Asa learns that Crowley runs cold and soaks up the warmth of Asa’s own body like a cat in the sunlight, like a – the thought evaporates as Crowley mouths at Asa’s neck, as always clean shaven.
Crowley’s stubble prickles along Asa’s jaw and his glasses seem to be in the way. Asa pulls him up, kisses his mouth again, licking into it. Of the hours they spent in each other’s company so far, this, all this, is the first thing that feels new.
“Do you –” Asa’s voice is unsteady, he clings to Crowley’s shoulders as if that will help. “Would you like to take these off?”
Crowley shakes his head. One of his hands is wandering down Asa’s chest, stroking through the hair there, nudging against a nipple. “Can’t see shit without ‘em.”
“Not much to see,” Asa says, because he spent the last three days convincing himself that Crowley is altogether much to cool for them and something about this has to be difficult. Something about everything is always difficult.
Crowley stares at him, shakes his head. “I waited thousands of years for a chance to look at you, angel.”
Asa makes a noise, a not quite dignified noise, and Crowley laughs and kisses his blushing cheeks and helplessly laughing mouth. Kisses his chest, too, and his belly and the soft inside of his thighs. He keeps them spread, fingertips dipping into the flesh as he swallows and swallows and swallows around him until Asa sees stars. Actual stars. Nebulas and meteoroids and – look at you! You’re gorgeous! – and endless, vast, colorful space.
He’s gasping, after, one hand still in Crowley’s hair. Crowley, who is panting, too, head resting against Asa’s thigh.
“Come here,” Asa says, demands, pleads. “Come here, darling, let me take care of you.”
“Already did.” Crowley grins, almost bashful, and wipes his hand on his own thigh. His face is flushed. “Couldn’t help myself. S’fine.”
Oh. Asa smiles back and pulls Crowley up into a kiss, long and slow. After a while, Crowley drops down next to him, and they both lie on their back and stare at the ceiling.
After long minutes of silence, Crowley asks, “Still not too fast?”
“No, Crowley.”
“Oh. Oh, good.”
Silence, again, until Asa breaks it. “Thousands of years.”
Crowley hums. “Feels a bit like it, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” Asa says, lost in thoughts. “Yes, it does, rather.”
He takes Crowley’s hand and puts it on his own chest. Crowley holds on tight.
*
The next morning, Crowley disappears and comes back with breakfast from the coffee shop across the street, and a new lightbulb.
He changes it balancing on a chair on the staircase. During the entire process, Asa berates him for almost breaking his neck, all the while holding the chair in place to make sure he doesn’t.
*
“Asa.”
“Hmm.”
No response. Asa lifts his book so that he can look at Crowley, who is dozing with his head on Asa’s thigh. They are in Asa’s flat on the sofa, as they have often been in the past month.
“Crowley,” Asa says.
“Hm?”
Asa smiles at him over the rim of his reading glasses. “Did you want something?”
“Er, no. Nothing. S’a funny name, that’s all. Asa.”
Asa looks back at his book. “It’s Hebrew. Means ‘healer’.”
“Hebrew,” Crowley murmurs, sounding like he’s talking mostly to himself. Another look at him and Asa sees he’s scowling.
“Does my name offend you?” he asks mildly, turning a page.
“Doesn’t suit you.”
“I’ve been getting along with it just fine all my life, Crowley, thank you.”
Crowley yawns and waves him off. “It’s a good enough name, I s’ppose.”
“Why, I’m relieved you think so.”
He puts his hand on Crowley’s chest and rubs circles into the fabric of his ridiculously expensive dress shirt, rumpled from all the lazing around. After a while, Crowley rumples it more by rolling onto his side, drawing up his knees. His face pressed into the crook between Asa’s thigh and soft hips. He mutters something into Asa’s jumper.
“What was that, my dear?”
Crowley is quiet for another few moments, then, “Nobody else calls me Crowley.”
“Oh.” Asa pauses. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Why do you? Why not – I mean, I do have a first name. Two, even.”
“Why I –” Asa lowers his book. “Well, I can’t say I’ve ever considered it. I’ll use your first name, of course, if you prefer.”
“No. Nah, I like it.”
*
Crowley teaches three days a week and spends a lot of nights looking at the stars. As it happens, there is a rooftop terrace over Asa’s flat.
The space is small, crammed into the tightly packed roofs of Soho. But there is enough place for a telescope and a mountain of blankets and pillows. A book, two cups of cocoa, and a few flower boxes.
Two months in, Crowley spends more nights in Soho than in his own flat in Mayfair, and his telescope and plants and ungraded papers and even more plants come along with him. As long as it’s warm enough, he likes being on the terrace when it’s dark, working on his sleek laptop with his glasses sitting low on his nose, or looking through the telescope and complaining about light pollution.
Asa sits with him, reading, or sometimes doing inventory for the bookshop in the light of a gas lamp Crowley doesn’t get tired of making fun of. On clear nights – as clear as you can get in central London – Crowley shows him the stars, and when he does, Asa’s heart always beats too fast, trapped between giddiness and loss.
The latter, he doesn’t comprehend. Because Crowley slots right into the empty space at Asa’s side, as if he was built just for this. As if they have been waiting, waiting, waiting.
“I’ll take you to the observatory,” Crowley is saying, “I’ll show you everything, it’s too damn foggy here. We should go somewhere where there’s nothing, something – middle of Australia, maybe, you can see Alpha Centauri from there.”
“What’s Alpha Centauri?” Asa asks, and Crowley pulls away from the telescope and looks at him like he’s still waiting for something that never quite comes around.
“Star system,” he says. “Three stars, two of ‘em – Alpha Centauri AB, that’s a binary star, third brightest in the sky. It’s my favorite.”
“A binary star.”
“That’s two stars that belong together.”
He turns back to the telescope. Asa sits on his blankets and pillows, soft, comfortable, and cannot breathe. His favorite. Asa didn’t know, he should have known; he should have read Crowley’s book, but he told him he shouldn’t, he’d tell him everything himself. Still. Asa didn’t know.
He stands up. Crosses the short distance and plasters himself against Crowley’s back, arms wrapped around his middle. He presses his forehead against Crowley’s back.
“Angel?”
There is the urge to apologize and he doesn’t know what to do with it, where it comes from. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I missed you, the second I saw you I knew –
“Angel, what’s wrong?”
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
*
Crowley teaches better than he writes. Asa just wanted to drop by to bring him something he’d forgotten at home, but he ends up sitting in the back row, enthralled.
Crowley scribbles on the board, handwriting unintelligible, and talks and talks and talks like he usually only does when he’s drunk. He makes the students laugh. He listens when they raise their hands; not a single question goes unanswered.
“Thank you, really,” Crowley says when they leave the lecture hall. He takes the notebook Asa brought him, stuffing it into his bag, and the coffee that’s by now cold and also half empty because Asa took too many sips during the lecture. “You didn’t have to stay.”
“No, I wanted to. It was lovely.”
“Oh, that was – no, ah, it was nothing, I just –” Crowley gestures around with his free hand and takes a sip of coffee, wincing. “Ugh. Never thought I’d end up teaching, but well. It’s not too bad.”
“Oh, you love it,” Asa says, smirking. “The audience.”
Crowley rolls his eyes, but when a student calls after them and demands his attention he stops at once to listen to them. Asa stands to the side, watching, and tries to ignore the painful pull in his chest.
There’s something about the way Crowley tilts his head and thinks before he answers, the easy smile; an unfamiliar softness. Often when Asa turns to look at him, he expects to see an invisible weight on Crowley’s shoulders, making him snarl and sneer. Nonsense, of course. He has only ever known Crowley like this.
“Annoying buggers,” Crowley says when he’s shooed the student away, but he loves them, every single one of them, Asa can see that.
“It suits you,” he says, the words just bubbling out of him. “I’m so happy for you.”
Crowley huffs and scratches his ear. “Yeah, well. What about you? You ever wonder how you ended up where you did?”
“Oh, no. No, I’ve always been a bookseller.”
“Right.” Crowley smiles and tosses the coffee into a bin. “Of course you were.”
*
It comes and goes. Sometimes, Asa doesn’t recognize Crowley’s voice right away because the accent isn’t right. Sometimes Crowley enters the bookshop and stops and stares for a moment, eyes narrowed at Derek like he’s a speck of dirt that needs cleaning. Sometimes the Bentley doesn’t play Queen and Asa sits there, wondering. Sometimes Crowley looks pained when Asa sells a book.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Asa says one night, bent over the sink. He splashes more water into his face. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please, go back to sleep.”
“Nothing’s wrong with you,” Crowley says. He pads over the tiles to the sink, barefoot, and Asa misses his snakeskin shoes, the gold in his eyes behind sunglasses, the –
“I don’t know,” Asa says, hollowly.
“Well, I’ve been meaning to tell you, that hair cut’s terrible, but that’s nothing we can’t fix, eh?”
Asa holds his hand under the still running water and splashes some of it at Crowley.
“Oi. I’m just trying to be helpful here, come on.”
“It’s not fair.” Asa looks at his own reflection, blonde hair a little wet from when he ran his hands through it just seconds ago, blue eyes wide. Slowly, he reaches out to turn off the water. “Is it? Does it – does it feel fair to you?”
Crowley comes closer to him. He’s wearing a pair of Asa’s pyjama pants and Asa can still hear him hissing if you tell anyone you’re dead and would smile thinking about it if there wasn’t all this grief in his chest.
Crowley smiles at him, eyes a little wet, or maybe his glasses are just smudged and Asa is imagining things. His hand settles on Asa’s lower back and he leans in, kissing his temple before resting his forehead against it.
“It’s all we get,” he says.
The floor is gone, swept away like a cloth in a bad magic trick. Asa’s head spins along with it, their reflection blurring right in front of him.
“It’s not fair,” he says again.
Crowley wraps his arms around him, pulls him closer. “I thought we’d have less. Does that make sense? No, fuck, I know it bloody doesn’t, I just –“
“No, it does,” Asa says, even though it doesn’t, shouldn’t; he feels like he dropped his stomach somewhere. Thousands of years, he thinks, that is what he wanted, wants, still. Thousands, billions, until the heat death of the universe. And after.
Still, yes. He remembers being certain that they would have less. Nothing, even less than nothing. When he thought that, he does not know.
“I found you.” Crowley cups his face, makes him turn towards him. “Hey. I did, didn’t I? I walked into your fucking bookshop – and it’s yours, don’t tell me it’s not, that wanker doesn’t –”
“Really, darling, he’s not that bad.”
“Oh, shut up. I found you, I did. I’d choose this, every time. And I’m happy. Aren’t you?”
“Oh,” Asa says, exhaling, and puts his hands on Crowley’s hips. “Oh, Crowley, me too, of course.”
They don’t sleep any more that night. They stay awake and empty one or two bottles of wine, in bed, and some time around four in the morning he has Crowley on his belly, gasping, kissing his shoulders and the bumps of his spine. He’s thinking, inexplicably, about feathers, fresh and black near an ever burning flame, and angry golden eyes. Always angry, deep down.
“No,” Crowley mutters when Asa wants to pull out. “No, don’t. Don’t. Fuck.”
Asa shushes him and stays on top of him for a while longer, the side of his face resting on Crowley’s heated shoulder.
“I think I might be dreaming,” Asa says softly, closing his eyes. “Awake, but dreaming. The things I think about –”
“I know,” Crowley says, choked. “Me too.”
Finally, Asa pulls out and lies down next to Crowley, not caring for the moment that things are wet and sticky. Crowley curls up against his side, and Asa strokes his back, follows his spine, feels the smooth skin where feathers used to sprout.
“Crowley,” he says lightly.
“Ngh.”
“If I were to ask. Theoretically.”
“Ask what, angel.”
“Would you marry me?”
Crowley laughs. “It’s been, what. Three months?”
“Almost, yes.”
Crowley stops laughing. He wraps an arm around Asa’s middle. “When do they open?”
*
They get an appointment the next week, and only because Crowley charms – and possibly bribes, but Asa isn’t sure and doesn’t ask – the people in charge into fitting them in as soon as possible.
They leave the town hall a married couple. Above the bookshop, they get drunk on wine and spend the rest of the day in bed. The next morning, they leave for the South Downs and spend two weeks in the cottage Crowley bought near twenty years ago, not knowing what for.
Back in Soho, Crowley turns the rooftop terrace into a garden. They sit there together often, with take-out and good wine. Eventually, Asa inherits the bookshop, and sells a lot less books as a result. Crowley writes a second book that does marginally better than the first. He teaches, and studies.
Whickber Street exists on, and continues to do so when they move to the South Downs indefinitely. Crowley never quite learns to call Asa by his given name; when asked, he says it’s not enough syllables.
As far as Asa is concerned, angel works just fine, thank you very much.